Following the signposts: aplace-names walk into the past

This walk has been devised by John Baker and Jayne Carroll of theUniversity of Nottingham. Neither the University and its employees nor

the BBC can be held responsible for its suitability for any individualfollowing this route.

Appleby is an interesting hybrid place-name, containing Old English æppel 'apple'and Old Norse bý 'farmstead, village', and isone result of the linguistic impact Vikingsettlement had on English place-names.Magna ‘great’ and Parva ‘little’ aredistinguishing Medieval Latin additions.

1. Starting from Sir John Moore School, turn left out of themain drive and walk along Top Street and then New Roadin a southwest direction. Please be aware that some of theroads around the village are busy, and it is important to bevigilant and stick to pavements wherever possible. Whenfollowing smaller tracks, walkers should also take care overuneven, muddy and occasionally broken paths.

2. After about 500m you will arrive at the Atherstone Road(A444), and you will see the Appleby Inn opposite. Crossthe road with care – this is a particularly busy and fast-moving stretch – and turn left. Go past the footpath andthen turn right down Austrey Road (Westhill Farm is on thecorner). There are no pavements on this road, so watch outfor cars. Austrey Road winds its way uphill for about 500m.

Austrey means 'Ealdwulf's tree'. Ealdwulf is a typicalAnglo-Saxon personal name. Twycross means 'thetwo crosses' or 'the double cross'. In a world with fewmaps, distinctive trees and standing crosses wereoften used as markers, and it is probably nocoincidence that these crosses were located so closeto a county boundary that was also, perhaps, adiocesan boundary and the boundary betweenMercia and the Danelaw.

3. You will pass a radio mast on the right, and immediately

afterwards you will see a track, also on the right and running northwest. Follow this track, which is called Salt Street, and runs along the county boundary.

4. After 300m the track passes

over the M42. Just to your left is Pimlico Farm.

5. After another 200m the track reaches a summit overlooking No Man's Heath. Almost due east on the horizon is Bardon Hill and just to the right of that is Markfield.

6. Follow the track down towards No Man's Heath. To the left is the parish of Newton Regis.

No Man's Heath is situated at the junction of a number of roads. Two major routes are commemorated in place-names. Salt has always been an important commercial commodity, and Salt Street records the existence of long-distance tracks linking the saltpans of the west midlands with other parts of the country.

About 4km to the north, in Oakthorpe, Saltersford Bridge may recall another early salt-way. The neighbouring parish of Stretton en le Feld takes its name from a Roman road, Old English strǣt 'street', presumably linking Watling Street to the south with Ryknild Street. It is also an interesting illustration of the mix of languages that enter into English place-names, for while Stretton is an Old English place-name, the first part, strǣt, was a word borrowed by early English speakers from Latin (via) strata. Old English strǣt-tūn is a common place-name compound meaning 'settlement on the Roman road'. To distinguish it from other similarly-named villages, an affix was added in the later Middle Ages. The affix contains Old French en le 'in the', and Middle English feld 'open country, plain', so this was the Stretton that is in the plain.

Pimlico takes its name from Pimlico in London. It might have been so-named because of its location at the edge of the parish – it was a distant place.

Brandon goes back to Old English beorg-dūn. A beorg was a rounded hill or mound, while a dūn was a flat-topped hill. Modern quarrying has changed the shape of the hill, but the place-name suggests to us how it might once have looked – was it perhaps a flat-topped hill with a mound on top? Markfield means 'open land of the Mercians', and may well have been a site on the edge of Mercia, or a site where Mercian governmental gatherings took place.

Newton is a common place-name meaning 'new settlement or farm', and it may reflect the creation of a new settlement on the edge of the heathland on the shire boundary. The affix Regis is medieval bureaucratic Latin, and indicates that the village was owned by the king.

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7. A short distance after you join the Austrey Lane, headinginto No Man's Heath, two roads branch off to the right.Take the smaller of the two tracks heading northeast, andafter 100m you will arrive in the car park of Four CountiesSpice.

The meeting offour shires:

Then – FourCounties InnPubsign

Now – FourCountiesSpice

Four Counties Spice (formerly FourCounties Inn) takes its name from itslocation at the point where the shires ofNottingham, Leicester, Warwick andDerby came together. Before theboundaries were formalized, they wouldhave been separated by a wider expanseof land under shared use by thesurrounding communities, and this isreflected by the survival of an area knownas No Man's Heath. The Four CountiesInn and the hamlet of No Man's Heathwould have begun as squattersettlements, and folkloric traditions havegrown up around their interesting legalposition between different legal districts.

Below: View of the Salt Streetridge from the carpark of FourCounties Spice. Is this theSpellow?

8. Continue along the sametrack towards the mainroad, but take the footpathon the right, heading easttowards Dingle Farm.

However, places that occupied boundarylocations also provided useful neutral groundfor legal assemblies involving severalcommunities. That this was the case on NoMan's Heath is indicated by a now lost place-name Spellow, recorded in a medievaldocument relating to the furlongs in NortonField. The first element of this is an Old Englishword spell 'speech', a reference to thenegotiations and pronouncements that tookplace at such sites. The second element iseither Old English hlāw '(artificial) mound' orhōh 'hill-spur'. It is possible that an old moundhas disappeared after centuries of ploughing,but the local topography is strongly in favour ofhōh, given the shape of the ridge along whichSalt Street leads down to No Man's Heath. Thelate Margaret Gelling, who spent many yearsstudying place-names of this kind, defined theclassic shape of a hōh as a gently rising ridgefalling away in a slightly concave slope. Fromthe car-park of Four Counties Spice, take alook back at the hill-spur to the south. You willsee a gently rising ridge falling away in aconcave slope!

9. Follow this path past DingleFarm in a southeast direction,taking care not to damagecrops or disturb any farmanimals or horses you pass onyour way. The track turns eastagain for about 50m, before asharp turn to the northeast togo under the motorway. Beforeyou reach this bend, take alook over the fence on your left. This is Dingle Hill withviews to the north.

10. Continue along the track until it comes out on the A444next to Appleby Inn. Turn left and then cross the road andfollow New Road back to Sir John Moore School.

Institute for Name-Studies, School of English, University of Nottingham,University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD

Website: www.nottingham.ac.uk/ins

Key to English Place-Names: http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/

Email: name-studies@nottingham.ac.ukTelephone: +44 (0)115 951 5919 Fax: +44 (0)115 846 7526

Directly to the north is CadboroughHill. It is just possible that it has thesame meaning as the recurrentplace-name Cadbury, the secondelement of which is OE burh'stronghold'. The first part is thoughteither to derive from a British name,perhaps containing *catu- 'battle', orto be the name of an otherwiseunknown mythical figure, Cada.